A Winter's Storm
by OneMagician
Summary: Gold had never thought of himself as someone who'd be happy with 'normality', but he was getting the hang of it after Belle had given birth to their son. A pity that 'normality' never lasted long in Storybrooke. No chance of it at all with Regina wanting Marian gone, and Elsa bringing the storm of the century down on its inhabitants. Lots of Rumbelle fluff and some Snowing
1. Midnight

1. Midnight

It was midnight again, and full moon to boot. _No sleep for the wicked,_ Gold realized, and raised himself quietly from the bed so he wouldn't wake Belle or the infant that slept soundly in her arms since she'd nursed him an hour ago. That was when he'd woken, but he loved to watch her feed their son at night, when all was still, and all was well – as well as it had ever been in his life. Drowsily, she'd soothe the child and show him where to latch on, pulling a face when he did, and he'd listen to her speaking softly to him, encouraging him whenever he'd drift off without having taken his fill. He loved the contented, sighing, slurping little sounds his baby boy would make when he drank from her breast, and he loved the look on her face when Corbin was done and she'd lay him gently between them.

But that was an hour ago, and although he was exhausted, his bed was too warm for him now, his pillow hard as a rock, and he couldn't say that he held hopes of subduing his awareness sufficiently to go back to sleep now. He'd forgotten to close the blinds, or neglected to do it in any case; Belle disliked it when they were drawn all the way. She always said it made her sleep uneasy, and she'd wake up more tired than she'd gone to bed, so he decided to desist from any further tossing and turning, sparing his wife from waking their child with his disquiet, in the end, and shut the door quietly behind him. It was chilly out in the hall, he noticed, but it was getting late in the year, and he supposed that it was just the draft from an open window letting in the night air. They'd had a beautiful, long Indian Summer – the prettiest he could remember - and it was over now.

Nighttime was the right time for anything and everything the Dark One had ever whispered in his ear to go bump on Gabriel Gold, and things _did_ tend to go bump on him, as they always would, when the events that still haunted him more than ten months after he'd been held prisoner by Zelena found him padding down the stairs of the salmon-colored Victorian while Belle slept, and they had him pacing holes in the carpet of his study and rubbing his bristly chin raw as he desperately tried to contemplate nothing in particular beyond what he was going to make his wife for her breakfast the next morning.

_Simple things_, Archie had told him time and again, _keep to simple thoughts; happy thoughts, and things that are good and yet to come_. He tried, but, more often than not, thoughts of a year spent in cages and kennels went slinking back and forth in his mind, somewhere in between the memory of losing Bae and finding that an old dog could not be taught new tricks, even by the wonderful woman sleeping in his bed with their newborn in her arms.

_Were there still eggs in the fridge,_ he wondered, and went to have a look, making himself block out how he'd deceived Belle about not going after Zelena. _How could he ever have not gone after Zelena?_ He hadn't been strong enough to promise Belle that he wouldn't, but she assumed that he hadn't because he hadn't admitted any differently, and he often wondered how Belle could overlook so many of the obvious half-truths he'd told her even since he'd been back and they'd been married.

She'd outright told him that the only truth she was interested in was that he'd not lie to her, and he hadn't. Not ever. Not strictly speaking. But as long as he wasn't being honest with her, strictly speaking, he had to live with the risk of her finding out. He had to live with the risk of her asking him about Zelena one day, and then he would not lie to her, because he'd have to trust that this was the only truth she'd be interested in. He had no way of knowing if he'd lose her if and when he told her the truth, but if he lied to her then, he'd lose her for sure. Same with the dagger, though the symbolic thought had been pure.

_Oh… the happy things yet to come… _

There was a whole new carton of eggs sitting on the upper shelf, he discovered, next to a package of bacon. He smiled as he took out the last box of orange juice to pour himself a glass, emptying it and folding the carton over on itself before he drained the glass. Belle loved orange juice, but it didn't agree with the baby, they'd learned, so he didn't beat himself up over that, and he wasn't buying another one just for himself when he did the shopping after work the next day, so this would be his last indulgence for a while. There was still some milk, and they had an unopened box of apple juice in the larder, so he'd know what to take upstairs on his _Sunday morning tray_, as she called the antique salver Maurice had given them for a wedding gift whenever he brought her breakfast in bed on it. He didn't even want to think about how Belle's father had been able to afford it, but he used it to please his wife, and he wanted to please her wherever he could.

He'd never thought of himself as domestic, but he was developing a knack for this, actually, and he was enjoying normality – even if it was twenty-first century Storybrooke normality. This had to be the first time in three hundred years that anything had ever been remotely normal for him, if you could call living in the World Without Magic _normal, _but the Charmings swore that between Hook, Emma and themselves they had everything covered (referring also to Regina, who was evolving into a problem best studied by daylight these days), so he was keeping himself out of anything he _could_ keep himself out of in their quaint little town – for Belle and for their little boy, and for as long as this slender slice of normality would last them all.

Of course… it didn't last. It _couldn't _have, he realized, when the pirate's face appeared in the frozen window pane above the sink opposite of where he'd just sat down at the kitchen table to eat the sandwich he'd made for himself. _Frozen_ window pane, Gold mused, _how very strange_, but discarded the thought of the frostwork on the glass almost immediately, returning to his irritation at seeing Jones outside his house at this hour.

_Jones_ and _his house_ – two things that didn't go together in his head at all, and he briefly envisioned all the things he could have done to Jones and blamed it on Zelena, if only she'd considered him more of a threat. He'd had him bound and gagged in the trunk of his car; he could have dropped him off the dock instead of letting him go, and no one would have been the wiser. Probably. Maybe. It would have been another thing to add to his list of midnight ruminations, but he definitely could have lived with _that_.

Tapping his hook against the window, Jones flashed him that utterly idiotic, lopsided smirk of his that he reserved for those times when he had to approach people he didn't trust just before he was going to ask something of them, and considering the time, Gold had a hunch he wasn't there to borrow a cup of sugar.

_Here we go again_, he muttered, putting down his bread and wiping his hands on a paper napkin, and went to let him in as he came bounding round to the back door, bobbing up and down on his heels like he needed a bathroom while he waited for Gold to open.

"This better be good," Gold began, but nearly swallowed his tongue when it hit him how cold it was outside, how _bitterly_ cold. This wasn't just a fall wind announcing winter – this was _subzero arctic_. Jones pushed past him, in a hurry to get inside and warm up, and for once, Gold paid him no heed, busy with staring at the layers of ice creeping over the cobblestone walk to his garage and the icicles that were forming on the roof gutter behind him instead.

"What the hell is going on?" he asked incredulously, but he had the sinking feeling that he did _not_ really want to know. _Not really_. Unlikely that the was going to get around it, however.


	2. Dawn

2. Dawn

The baby was fussing, but he'd been asleep for more than four hours now, miraculously, and Belle was starting to feel tender and sore herself. She needed to feed him, and he needed to be fed, so she turned on the tiny light on her night stand, pulled herself up and settled back against the headboard. Holding him so they were looking at one another, she gently stroked his soft, velvety cheek with one finger as he gazed back at her with that mixture of newborn-bewilderment and wisdom that always made her smile, and she told her son good morning. _Her son_. How lucky she was. How lucky _they_ were, and what a good morning _any morning_ would be when she could tell him so.

It was still dark outside, she could tell, so technically, it wasn't even morning yet, although it would be by the time she'd made sure he'd gotten enough because he always fell asleep on her while she fed him. She'd have to tease his chin and encourage him to keep going, turn on the ceiling lights and change his diapers and generally annoy him until he would continue to suck and get his fill, easing her discomfort in exchange for his own sated slumber. They were still getting used to each other and picking up a routine that would suit them both, but she wasn't worried that this was taking a while. They had all the time in the world, she thought, relieved that he was hungry enough to drink deeply, soon taking away the first peaks of the tension that had been building in her breast, and she listened to him swallowing greedily, drawing another smile from her lips.

She briefly wondered where Rumple had gone when she shifted Corbin to change sides; his sheets were cold, and she noticed that the room itself had cooled off quite substantially during the night. They'd need to turn the heating back on, she supposed, and waited for her son to finish as the grey light of dawn slowly began to creep over the horizon.

Her little boy had almost gone to sleep in her arms again – honestly, she'd never assumed that he would do nearly nothing else besides – and she decided they were done. She gently wiped a trail of milk from his chin with her thumb, pulled her L-sized Tee down over her nursing bra and held him upright to her as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed to go check on Rumple.

Painfully conscious that her husband wasn't getting much rest, she worried about him, but he wouldn't discuss her idea of separate bedrooms until Corbin's sleeping patterns were more accommodating. He said that he needed her close, and that they were his anchor in this world. He'd told her that he didn't want to miss a moment of the time they could be spending together, and that he'd rather wake up from their son's fussing than from any of the nightmares that were still haunting him when she wasn't at his side, or the voices in his head that might never quieten even when she was.

She'd never bothered with slippers for her feet as long as she'd been living in this house; she didn't even own a pair that she knew of, but she wished she did now. The parquet floor in the bedroom was quite pleasant to walk on, as always, as was the carpeted middle-section of the treads on the wooden staircase, but the tiles out in the downstairs hallway were _freezing_, she discovered as she made her towards the study where she expected to find him, rubbing her son's back soothingly.

The lights were on all over the lower level of the house, which was strange, and she almost turned around when she unexpectedly heard hushed voices coming from the kitchen; she was hardly dressed for company, and her hair was a mess, but Rumple must have perceived her movement, and he was there in the doorway before she could head on back to their room to get some clothes on. To her astonishment, right behind him stood Killian Jones, and as Rumple came towards her, she imagined that there were probably more people in her kitchen than there had been at Corbin's baby shower. Jones was not grinning, for a change, and the fact that he was here, _here_ _in their house, at_ _this hour_, _with a whole lot of other people_ unsettled her.

Unsettled and awkward though she felt, she saw the concern in Rumple's eyes bleeding through. Considering that he was a) talking to people he didn't like _in their house, at this hour_, and b) talking to them _in his nightwear_ – black sweatpants and an old creased T-Shirt – she decided that a proper attire had to be the least of their worries right now. This was not at all like her husband; there had to be something seriously amiss, she gathered, and her heart fell at the concept of tackling yet another crisis just as things were starting to improve for them all.

He encircled her in his arms, planting a light kiss on Corbin's head, and then led her into the kitchen where Red was making a pot of coffee, and Snow was heating some formula for Neal's breakfast in the microwave while David sat at the counter, holding him, and Jones paced unrelentingly back and forth between the back door and the fridge.

As opposed to her, they all seemed to be dressed for a sleigh ride in the Alps with layers and layers of clothes on them, and there were heavy winter coats, scarves and hats on the narrow coat rack by the door and on the worktop next to it. When the back door opened and Emma came in with Henry in her wake, bringing a rush of icy, cold air with her, she knew why.

"Hey…" she mumbled, taking a seat on the stool next to David and pulling her bare feet up so they wouldn't be touching the icy floor as Emma and Henry discarded their scarves and gloves. Hook tried to help Emma out of her coat, but she looked unnerved by his clumsy one-handed attempts to aid her when she wasn't in need, and he dejectedly gave up, retreating to his corner by the fridge.

"What's going on here?" Belle asked, observing Emma decisively face away from Jones, seemingly relieved that he wasn't hovering anymore. Her body language was speaking volumes as she came round the counter to stand between her and David. She set down an ugly, dilapidated blue urn in front of them as if in answering her friend's question, but didn't elaborate right away and hugged first Belle, brushing Corbin's head lightly with her lips, and then David, pecking him on the cheek while stroking her brother's fair hair and asking Red if there was any more coffee ready. That was Emma, or at least, how Belle saw her; economical, and extremely forthright. She smiled pensively as she handed Gold a set of keys Belle recognized as his spares to his shop, and he winked an unspoken thank you at her as he pocketed them.

Henry greeted Snow with a hug, and then came over to his little uncles, trying to decide which of them he'd like to hold first after he'd reverently nodded at Rumple, who'd gravely nodded back. Since Neal was cranky, he held out his hands to take Corbin from Belle while Rumple laid a bathrobe loosely over her shoulders – never mind how he'd fetched that from their room so quickly without her so much as noticing he was gone – and Belle surrendered the child freely to push her arms through the sleeves and pull the garment around her closely, grateful for its warmth. Henry was so good with the babies, she thought, still shivering slightly from the chill as she watched him walk around the kitchen with her son, a happy glow about him. But then, all the men in this family had turned out to be.

Red poured mugs of hot, steaming coffee for everyone, informing Belle this round was decaf, and Belle's gaze wandered to the window over the sink as Henry carefully handed Corbin on to Emma, who'd been itching to hold him just as much as he had since Belle had brought him home from the hospital. They hadn't seen much of each other these past two weeks – everybody had been giving her some space, and she had appreciated that.

Although it wasn't really dark outside anymore, she could see absolutely _nothing _as she tormented her lower lip, her brow crinkling as she tried to make out what was beyond that window: The pane was frozen solid, a milky white layer of ice coated it completely, she realized to her astonishment, and she half turned to her husband, who was still standing behind her, his hands her shoulders.

"It's October," she stated dryly, "why is it so cold, and why is there ice on that window pane?"

Rumple tucked his chin, and she found that he looked like a boy who'd been caught with his hand in the cookie-jar. _What was it this time?_

"And why is everybody here this early in the morning?" she demanded, broadening her interrogation to include rest of them while he was obviously still contemplating the complexity of her first question, and the room grew quiet.

"You should see the ice on the _inside_ of the windows in our loft," Henry finally offered in a small voice by way of explaining their presence in one of the only reasonably insulated private brick houses in town with a heating system that was very likely to be working, a generator in the tool shed, and a resident sorcerer who could provide running water even when the pipes were frozen.

Processing this, she glanced at the horrid, battered blue urn Emma had set on her kitchen counter and tried to remember where she'd seen it before, she could have added on another query to her list, but she decided to wait for Rumple to finish thinking about the first two she'd just pelted him with.

Emma sat down opposite her, cradling Corbin in her arms, and Belle marveled at the child's ability to just go right back to sleep whenever he was snug and comfy again, feeling safe, and feeling loved as he was. She would have given anything for a glimpse at the world he was dreaming of when he smiled reflexively as he did now, making Emma's eyes shine. Heaven, maybe, going by the peacefully relaxed expression on his round little face.

Hook, apparently needing to recover from the sight of his _true love_ holding a baby, and the crocodile's at that, took a swig from the small flask he still carried with him at all times – the second one she'd seen him knock back since she'd arrived.

"Well," he drawled disdainfully, releasing a slow breath she caught whiff of all the way across the room after he'd steeled himself in his usual manner, "It's going to be one hell of a winter, love. Oil prices will be on the up."

She cast a quizzical glance at Rumple when no one else seemed to have anything more to say, and he quirked his eyebrows at her, his mouth forming a straight line. "He's right. Looks like we're in for some nasty weather," he affirmed finally, "but not the kind you can just batten down the hatches against."

"Rumple, it's _October," _she repeated, and began speaking more slowly then, in case he wasn't hearing her right, in case they all weren't. "Would you please stop being so enigmatic?"

"Um… alright, then," Emma began haltingly, saving the day for the Dark One. "The reason for the cold spell we're having would have been contained in _this_," Emma stated haltingly, motioning towards the urn that was sitting by David's empty coffee mug, taunting her. Its lid was missing, indicating that it had most likely not held the ashen remains of someone who'd died very recently, but Belle had already been fairly certain that this had never been its purpose anyway.

Hook's usual laid-back toothy grin twisted into something rather less at ease when he continued Emma's line of thought. "Yah," he grumbled, "we sort of brought it back with us in January by mistake…"

"Sort of brought it back from _where_?" Belle inquired, feeling slightly overtaxed and thinking that neither her cognizance nor her memory were what they had been before her pregnancy – which they weren't.

The timer on the microwave beeped, announcing that Neal's milk was ready, and the tot became ever more cranky and restless on his father's arm just from the sound, making any further attempts at quiet, speaking-level conversation less than futile.

"Pavlov's dog," Snow huffed despondently at David, and took the bottle from the plate, fastening the teat to it. She pinched it between her pointer and her thumb and shook it pugnaciously, much to David's exasperation. Holding it over the sink, she released it then, and watched as a part of the bottle's contents squirted into the drain.

"I'm against this," she declared curtly, running some water and testing the temperature of the formula before she practically flung the bottle at her husband.

"What?" he came back at her, sounding as if he had no idea what she was talking about and straining to keep a good hold of the wiggling child that was now fretting quite agitatedly and reaching for its heart's desire with wet, pudgy hands while kicking his feet and drooling profusely. "Just let me do this," he said reproachfully, "_you_ had _months_ of feeding him!"

"He's got _teeth_ now," she informed him from between hers, and he rolled his eyes at her.

"So? The little guy still loves his milk," he returned stubbornly, finally letting Neal have the bottle after he'd held it to his own cheek. "And he loves his daddy giving him his breakfast in the mornings… don't you, little fella?"

As if in response to his father, the boy chortled contently, gulping his formula like there was no tomorrow while Snow watched her men in action, folding her arms crossly under her breasts.

_"Hello? Excuse me?"_ Belle insisted then, trying to direct everybody's attention back to the issues at hand now that Neal was busy and would be for another while. "Could you please start at the beginning, here? I've just given birth, and I'm confused," she admitted, but then reconsidered. "But I think I may have just _missed_ a part of this..."

"Well," Snow told her, disgruntledly waving a hand in David's direction, "Mr. Superdaddy here thinks that his son still needs to be bottle-fed at ten months just because it's so much fun, and –"

"Mary Margret – _Mom_ – I don't think Belle meant _that,_" Emma cut her off tersely, shooting her a look, and Snow blushed, clamping her mouth shut as Corbin began to stir.

"Okay. Listen, Belle," Gold sighed, getting visibly nervous and declining a refill of his coffee, "I first noticed this at the shop, after… after we'd dealt with Zelena." The way he said her name betrayed his heart, and Belle felt his nausea. "Now, when things turn up at my shop, it means they've gone missing someplace else," he continued, "In this case: back in our world, I would assume, since this was in my storage room at the castle when last I saw it."

Emma knew for sure it had been there. It had caught her eye when Rumpelstiltskin had told them some of the objects in his storage room were more than dangerous and needed to be locked away very securely indeed. Heavens, _he_ had looked more than dangerous and in need of being locked away very securely indeed when he'd said it. How would she _ever_ manage to forget the claw-tipped fingers, the wiry hair, the serpentine eyes, and the leather pants and brocaded waistcoat?

She vividly recalled the golden dustings on the imp's grey skin and the foul brown fangs in his mouth. Looking down at Corbin for a second, eying him closely, she could have sworn she spotted a golden haze about his tiny ears, but, thankfully, curses were cast and not inherited, and she did what she could to banish the imagery she'd just relived from her thoughts, while Hook actually remembered knocking that urn over, though he would never have admitted it now, and he took another stiff drink from his flask.

"We – Regina and I – have been observing this really weird patch of ice out at the barn all summer," she went on after a moment, fixing her glance to Belle's.

"It appeared there right around the time the urn turned up at the shop, and it didn't melt even when it got really hot… you remember when we had temperatures up in the nineties?"

Belle did. Oh, did she _ever_. She'd had months of her pregnancy to go, but those two weeks in summer had made her wish Regina had chosen a different climate zone for them before she'd cast the curse.

"_Really_ _weird_…" Emma pondered, "But we just couldn't put two and two together until now." She looked at Gold, and regretted for the umpteenth time that she hadn't approached him with this earlier. Sure, he'd known about the urn, but he hadn't realized that its protective enchantments had been breached - lid or none, its magic had nothing to do with its contents, but with the properties of the materials it was made of as such. Which he'd tried to explain to them an hour ago. He would have been able to figure this out months ago, had she told him about the ice then, and it wouldn't have come to this. She hadn't, because Regina had told her they'd handle it, to leave him alone with things that she could take care of herself. But then… "Tonight, around midnight, the ice started spreading all across town, and you could say –"

"We're good and frozen," Henry finished for her, but then another thing came to mind. "Speaking of Regina – has anybody seen her?"

And then it dawned on Belle. "Oh my…" she breathed and tried to wrestle down some imagery of her own as she grabbed the urn to inspect it more carefully before she slid off of her stool and drew herself up in front of the man she'd been foolish enough to marry. Not that she hadn't known that she was a fool, and not that she hadn't been aware that his version of the truth was always rather… incomplete. She just hadn't expected things that were _this old_ to come back to them _now_.

"You told me you'd destroyed this," she said softly, fighting to keep the misery out of her voice, and he winced inwardly, catching it all the same. He'd meant to. He'd had every intention to. But he hadn't.

* * *

**_Thank you everyone who's stopped to review my little winter tale in the middle of summer so far: Twyla Mercedes, Narniangriff23, RaziOUAT, cynicsquest, NobodyToo - really love the comments, and I'm quite open for suggestions on this one!_**

* * *

_**Next: high noon for the Dark One and his Lady of Avonlea, and even more company to keep everyone at the salmon-colored Victorian warm - which Hook just can't bring himself to appreciate.**_


	3. Noon

3. Noon

Noon found Red wondering who could be out there, figuratively knocking on Gold's door as the snow began piling so high that no one in their right minds would go wandering around town. The Lord of the Manor hadn't been seen in hours, and she suspected that Belle was still having it out with him in one of the many rooms of the enormous house, and that he'd wisely made use of his magic to soundproof it.

Although she'd always be on her friend's side, of course, she did feel a bit sorry for the Dark One as she went to answer his door the second time the bell rang. Henry was right behind her, hoping it would be Regina. It wasn't. No one had seen her for days, as it turned out. The phones were down and her mobile was off, so he was worried. Red knew him well enough to gauge his concern, and she decided she'd have to speak to Emma if he didn't hear from her in the next hours. God only knew why, but Henry still loved Regina, and he'd go looking for her himself if no one else would.

"Hello Jefferson," she sang at the Hatter when he marched past her and into the den ahead of Grace, knocking the snow off his boots and coat on the cleaning rags she'd laid out in the hall when the blizzard had started in case there would be some coming and going. There hadn't been – not yet – but she was glad that she had met precautions. She didn't want Belle cleaning for them, and opening the door in itself had brought in mounds of white, powdery snow that had started melting the moment it connected with the in-floor heating, and she resolved to get David and Killian to start clearing the porch and shoveling a path the moment she saw them.

"Hey there, pretty girl," Jefferson returned and hugged her when he'd rid himself of the coat and woolly scarf he'd huddled into up to his nose. Gosh, he smelled good, she thought wistfully. How could a man _smell_ so good? Her nose told her a lot of things about men, and it told her that this one was just _wonderful_. There was the subtle, unobtrusive aftershave he used, for one thing, and a hint of the body lotion he must have applied after showering earlier for another… imagine a man using _body lotion, _she mused – _Jefferson_ using body lotion… on himself, on her, oh dear… a vision to die for… And then there was his shampoo; something fruity, but not sweet, and she could see herself running her hands through that thick, soft, wavy hair of his if she were ever to kiss him... right before she'd rid him of that soft, freshly laundered, spring-fragrant sweatshirt, leaving her finally with the spicy scent of _Jefferson_ – just _Jefferson_.

"Are you alright, dear?" he asked, letting go of her, and she nodded, swallowing hard as she hung his coat over the banister to dry and took Grace's from her to do the same.

Henry was disappointed, though he was quite fond of Grace. He didn't know what to make of Jefferson yet, since he'd only met him twice. He seemed nice enough, and Emma seemed to like him.

"Have you seen my –" he was going to say mom. She was a lot of things, and he was still trying to decide how to refer to her. Neither Emma nor Regina was comfortable with him calling either of them mom in the other woman's presence, and he was stepping on glass wherever he went with that. Regina was the Evil Queen, the Wicked Stepmother, the Malicious Sorceress and she was more _mother_ than _mom_, but then again, she wasn't even that, and he was getting too old for this in any case, he thought.

"Have you seen Regina?" he asked the Hatter, and Jefferson stared at him for a moment, making him uneasy.

"No," he finally replied, "no, I haven't, sorry," and Henry's face fell. Red could tell Jefferson was lying, but she would never have said so in front of the children, and she assumed that he would have a good reason.

Henry turned to her, a pleading look on his face, and she cupped his cheek with her hand. "Don't worry," she told him. "You know her. She'll be alright."

"You bet," Jefferson affirmed. "You know, she's –" Red had the feeling he was going to say something nasty, but briefly glancing at her and thinking better of it, he swallowed the words that were barely still balancing on his tongue. "She's got magic, and she definitely knows all about –" he had to swallow again, and Red was starting to get annoyed with him, "winter," he closed, giving up.

Red sighed. Touchy subject all round, and she was quite sure that this would never _ever_ change. Her sentiments towards the Evil Queen were no better than his, no better than most people's, but Henry still saw something in her that they never would. She respected that and would never think of undermining it. He'd called her mom for the better part of his life, and even though she wouldn't have been nominated for the Mother of the Year of _any_ year, she'd taken care of him and seen to his needs, and she'd loved him, in her own way. Children always loved back, no matter what kind of parent they were cursed with – in this case literally.

"Henry, I'll speak to Emma. Why don't you go show Grace that new game you were telling me about in the meantime?" she suggested, and Henry's eyes brightened up a bit when Grace got out her I-Phone and wiggled it at him.

"Doubles?" she inquired, and he nodded, leading her up to the room his grandfather and Belle had for him here. Emma had agreed to let him spend time at the house with Rumple, and he was quite at home.

He had the same mobile with several of the games on it that she played rather well, and he'd installed a new one only a few days ago. Playing doubles was so much more fun, though, and he decided to let himself be distracted by it for a while. They settled down on the broad windowsill overlooking the drive, just in case, and got hooked up while Jefferson followed Red into the kitchen to get some hot tea.

Emma was standing at the counter buttering sandwiches with Snow, and neither of them looked very happy, although Emma's eyes brightened considerably when they met the Hatter's.

"Hey," he said, swiping a piece of ham, and she smiled as he rolled it up and popped it in his mouth after pecking her on the cheek.

"Hey yourself," she replied, wiping her hands on a dish cloth, "What made you go out in _that_?"

He plunked down on the chair opposite her, helping himself to some sliced peppers, and Red set about filling the kettle to make some tea.

"The Evil Queen did," he told her, still chewing. "Do you know, she's down at the Rabbit Hole, _drinking_."

"What?" David inquired sharply, his eyes darting back and forth between Emma and Jefferson incredulously. "Alone?"

"No… not quite – there's a blonde down there with her, and she's just as… um… inebriated as Regina is, and together, they're making a bit of a nuisance of themselves."

"Oh!" Belle exclaimed, entering the room behind him, followed by Rumple as Jefferson launched an attack on the cheese, getting his hand slapped by Snow.

"Well, _that_ would explain a few things, considering the Locksley-debacle," Rumple muttered, putting the Babyfone down on the counter next to where Red was measuring her favorite rooibos blend into the tea ball.

He smiled painfully at Belle, and she shot him a glance that would have left anyone but the Dark One scarred for life.

"Sweetheart…" he began soothingly, but this was just the moment Corbin chose to wake up and voice his annoyance at finding himself alone. She was about to turn on her heel to go and check on him when Snow squeezed her arm lightly.

"I'll go," she told Belle a little too cheerfully and hurried past her towards the door. "Bedroom?" she asked, and Belle nodded.

"He can't be hungry again, though" she groaned, and Snow chuckled.

"We'll see about that."

Belle doubtfully sat down next to Emma, and Emma pushed a mug of coffee in front of her.

"Decaf doesn't cover it, huh?" the younger woman grinned, and Belle put her head down on her arms on the counter comically for a second before adding milk and several large spoons of sugar to her coffee. If she couldn't have the caffeine, then she'd be darned if she wouldn't take the sugar.

"So, Regina is in a bar getting sloshed with someone no one seems to know," Emma summarized, grinning, "and it's been storming like a bitch ever since."

Jefferson nodded, and Emma folded her arms across her chest, her brow furrowing even farther.

"Well…" Belle began diffidently, "Not _quite_," and everyone looked at her.

"_Not quite_ that it's been storming like a bitch, _not quite_ that she's getting loaded down at the Rabbit Hole, or _not quite_ that nobody knows who the blonde is?" Red inquired, slightly irritated as Hook entered the room, which irritated her all the more.

"Not quite that nobody knows who the blonde is," Belle admitted calmly, blowing on her coffee before taking a sip. "I know her… rather well."

"You do?" Hook asked, smirking, "or _Lacey_ did?" and Gold flicked a piece of lint from his arm that turned into a mosquito. The mosquito made a beeline for Hook, got beneath his shirt at the collar where it began pestering the pirate without him even noticing. It started working its way from the neck downwards, one drop of blood after the other all the way across his back and into his underpants. The tiny parasite was having a blast, and Gold was sure Jones (the big parasite) would too, later that day and for at least a few weeks after that until Whale had diagnosed the malaria…

"Love?" Belle snapped, interpreting that uniquely controlled look on his face with distrust, and he rolled his eyes, scrapping the malaria from the spell he'd just cast. But only that, and not the nasty, infectious rash Jones was in for.

"What?" he inquired innocently when she didn't stop glaring, and she raised an eyebrow at him, but he held fast.

"Belle?" Red insisted crossly, "Rumple?" and they both returned her attention to the problem at hand as Hook began scratching his neck.

"It's complicated," Gold began, but Emma cut him off before he could get into that – he always did that, and it never got them anywhere.

"No, it's not," she said bluntly, and Belle set down her mug, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she looked up at her husband's baffled face. He was going to have to get used to this. There were people in his life now besides her, and they trusted him – _mostly – _but they weren't going to take any crap from him. They cared enough to stick around and accept him for what he was, even after all that had happened, and he was going to have adjust. Just as she was.

"Both of you know something we don't, and I think we have a right to be told before Gold here goes all _Dark One_ again and does his… _thing_, going all…" Emma flourished her hands and threw back her head in exasperation, "you know – _purple haze and mysterious fog and spell here, magic there_ on us again. Who knows where that would take us, and if there's any way to end this winter without anyone having to fight dragons, throw fireballs, kill the Wicked Witch, or transplant the entire town back into the Middle Ages, I'd just like to be able to get on with it."

Belle sighed, and Gold kneaded her shoulders, decisively minding his tongue while everyone stared at the Savior.

"Do you want to tell the tale or shall I?" he inquired eventually, and Belle stroked his hand.

"It's alright," she said, and David turned down the volume on the Babyfone so they wouldn't be distracted by Snow singing to Corbin, who'd already stopped fussing.

"Okay," Belle began as Emma absently resumed throwing together their meal. "It's like this…" and she told them a story that went way back to the time when she'd been a maid in an enchanted castle, and the father of her child the Dark One.

It was the story of the Lady of Avonlea, whose father had all but ruined his fiefdom's welfare with his lack of good judgment and a series of disastrous decisions. He'd lent and borrowed money without keeping track, and his advisors had been anything but loyal, filling their own pockets before absconding to leave the Duke up to his neck in difficulties.

When the Ogre Wars had reached Avonlea, Belle had done the only thing she could think of to save her people and called upon Rumpelstiltskin, since none of their former allies had responded to their pleas for help. The Dark One had answered to her summons, and the price for his magic had been her.

Belle did not halt at this part of the story, and she'd been quite determined to plough on, but the looks that Emma and Red exchanged at this point made her blush all the same.

"Save it," she insisted assertively, reading Emma, who was trying to decide whether or not to make light of the situation by insulting Gold just enough to get a witty remark that might dissolve the awkwardness of the moment. "It wasn't like that _at all_."

Hook snorted a little too loudly at that, galling everyone.

"Darling, look away –" Gold whispered softly in Belle's ear, fighting for composure, and turned the mosquito that was happily slurping the pirate's blood into a Tsetse Fly while she did as he asked of her.

"What did you just do?" the pirate growled, rubbing his back against the handle of the refrigerator as the fly relentlessly made its way towards his more sensitive parts.

Gold smiled darkly and ignored him, as they all did, and Jones inelegantly scratched his behind with his hook, earning himself a look of disgust from Emma.

Belle stumbled on to concisely outline her duties at the Dark Castle, markedly omitting the occasionally reoccurring messy clean-ups after Rumple's torture sessions with the local outlaws down in the dungeons. It seemed to her that she was still having to justify her existence and rebuff what everyone was obviously still thinking about her relationship with the most powerful sorcerer in this world or any other over and over again, and it was as frustrating now as it had ever been.

Then, she commenced to tell them about the outcome of her 'deal with the devil' for Avonlea: the ogres had been turned to stone and moved to the Forgotten Mountains, where they stood even today, statues of remembrance suspended in space and time, and everybody had been happy.

All had been just _peachy_.

Or it would have been, had Maurice not been wallowing in self-pity over having let the Dark One _take_ his daughter, though she maintained that she _had_ _gone of her own free will_, and she'd sent home several letters to reassure her family that she was alright. Moe had never replied. He might not have believed her, she conceded, not at the time, and he probably hadn't known _how _he should reply to her. How could he have? Plus, not everyone in the Enchanted Forest could read, after all, it had occured to her much later, and she'd honestly concluded that he simply might not have been _able_ to personally write back with half of his court and the scrivener who'd taught her when she was a child up and gone. Whatever. It didn't really matter anymore. He'd not been paying attention to the things he should have in the way that he should have, in any case, and that had soon got him in trouble again.

"Poor Moe," Snow sighed as she entered the kitchen, standing beside Jones. She thought better of it, though, when she noticed his hand clumsily going down the back of his pants to scratch his rear.

"Poor Moe indeed," Hook remarked, straightening and not seeming to give a damn that he was making a spectacle of himself. "Put yourself in his place and imagine having your beautiful, beloved daughter taken away to the other end of the realm by some creepy, dark, dangerous being with the kind of reputation that–"

"Shut _up_," everybody else in the room chorused before Belle could say anything and Gold might be tempted to put an end to him indefinitely.

The sorcerer did, however, turn the mosquito in Jones' underwear into a mite that would cause the scoundrel a case of scabies that should frighten even the good doctor. The mosquito was far too easily squashed, Gold thought, and scabies might keep Emma away from him for a while, even if he did manage to talk her round again, as he so often had these past months. She deserved better. A spade was a spade, and who was Daddy Charming trying to kid?

"You were saying that Maurice was having a hard time," David picked up, eying Gold suspiciously before giving Belle a reassuring smile, and Belle nodded, taking another swallow of coffee.

"He was," she continued, and confessed that she had foreseen this, but accepted it anyway, under the circumstances. She'd have done anything to keep the ogres and the immediate danger they posed from their doorstep, and her plan had, whatever way you looked at it, worked.

Avonlea's relations with its neighbors, however, had deteriorated even further after she was gone. Maurice had started to neglect what few confederations and friendships remained, both diplomatic and personal, while concentrating on his self-pity and funding Gaston's expeditions and search parties, as he'd told her later. Finally, there had been a putsch, dethroning the Duke, and he'd been exiled.

"Come to think of it, where _was_ Moe when we were in back in the Enchanted Forest?" Red inquired, and Belle shrugged her shoulders.

"Beats me – he wouldn't say, but I didn't want to push him," she replied, and her glance wandered agitatedly to Hook, who was writhing in discomfort and using a carving fork from the cooking utensils rail on the wall behind him to scratch himself. He became aware of her stare and put the fork back, excusing himself to the bathroom. Snow grabbed it and dumped it in the sink.

"What is _wrong_ with that man?" she asked exasperatedly, and Emma flushed, putting down the knife she was clenching too tightly. She licked some mayonnaise off of her thumb, and Jefferson scooped up the first sandwich, therewith opening the buffet. He took a big, ravenous bite, and she grinned at him broadly, watching him chew, allowing him to divert her mind.

"This is so good," he mumbled, plopping a piece of stray cucumber in his mouth as Red set a mug of tea down in front of him. "Is there anything you are not absolutely fantastic at?"

The Shape Shifter realized that she was never going to find out what brand of shampoo the Hatter was using. Glancing back and forth between him and Emma, who still smiling at him way beyond the moment, she thought it was highly probable that the Savior would. Tough luck for the ever tough-lucked Shifter, she concluded, and wondered if Gold had any Amaretto or a nice, smooth brandy in the house to drown her sorrows in later on by the fireside, if they were still here after dark. She'd ask Belle to second, but her friend had been pregnant for a felt eternity and was now nursing. Snow didn't drink, and Emma was always on duty, so there wasn't a chance in hell she'd have company to mope, which left her hoping the phones would soon be working again so she could call Whale.

"Anyway, it must have been a while after my father had been exiled when someone I hadn't expected at all came to see me at the Dark Castle after they hadn't found me in Avonlea," Belle took up where she left off then, plucking Red from her thoughts of a good monster-to-monster with Frankenstein.

"So Gaston _did_ find his way to the Dark Castle?" Snow inquired, but Belle shook her head.

"No…" she mumbled, "strangely enough, he set off with an entire army of over a hundred men, apparently, almost six months before my father was ousted." She tormented her lower lip as vivid recollections of the boorish man's general tendency towards dramatic entrances and exits, staginess and spectacular overzealousness flooded her mind. She shuddered slightly at the thought of what Rumpelstiltskin might have done to the nobleman at the peak of his impishness. She pictured him actually turning up at the gates, waving his sword in the Dark One's face, and shook her head again, drawing her shoulders up involuntarily. "He was never seen again," she trailed off flatly, supposing that the idiot had probably gotten himself thoroughly lost somewhere between the Eastern Marshes and the Unending Woodlands.

Gold didn't flinch. He was thinking of the magnificent rose garden that the courage of one hundred loyal soldiers' hearts had created, and the happiness that a single, long-stemmed Sedona had brought his Belle, making him happy in turn. It would be worth every single pang of guilt she could inflict upon him if she ever found out. But then, why should she? He was so seriously NOT. TELLING.

"Moe, then?" Red frowned, and Belle shook her head again.

"Though I never said he couldn't, you know," Gold hastened to inform them, raising his hands defensively when his wife turned to him with a expression he found hard to gauge. "Just saying…" As he had been all morning.

"The point being you never specifically said that he _could_," she returned, equally tired of repeating herself as he was and fairly certain that her father would never set foot in this house unless he was especially invited because he still hadn't up until now. "But we've been through all that, and it's history," she muttered, picking absently at the sandwich Emma had set on a plate in front of her.

"Quite literally," he resigned.

"Well?" Snow folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the worktop. "Who was it, then?"

Belle cleared her throat, putting a piece of tomato back on her plate. "It was my cousin, Anna of Arendelle."

"_Arendelle_?" Emma burst out incredulously, "Get away! You have _got_ to be kidding me!" Discovering that no one else was laughing, though, she realized that the Disney version of Anna and Arendelle she knew might, _yet again_, not match the description her friends and family from the Enchanted Forest had in mind. Maybe Gold was right, and this really _was_ complicated…

"Anna…" Snow mumbled breathily, blanching as though to underline what Emma was thinking. She had to sit down. "Elsa is your cousin…"

"You never told us that," David said quietly to Belle, exchanging a glance with his wife.

"Well, it's not something you go advertising," Belle responded contritely. "Or would you have run around Storybrooke telling everyone that your cousin was the Northern Queen responsible for the Ten Year Winter and the Great Dearth, and countless armies of Ogres spilling down from the Forgotten Mountains in the first place, just because of an adolescent tantrum she'd thrown after an argument with her sister over a _boy_?!"

She had a point, Snow thought, and noted the look of relief about her friend's face when the Babyfone started crackling as Corbin stirred.

"Gimme twenty minutes," Belle grumbled and pushed past Hook, who was presently returning to the kitchen.

"What did I miss?" he inquired, looking slightly the worse for wear. No one answered him, and his pallid brow creased slightly.

He reached past Emma for the last sandwich on the platter, but Jefferson snatched it up before he could take it. The Hatter took a huge bite out of it and rose, making a hearty noise of contentment, and Jones scowled at him, barely able to restrain himself. Jefferson merely smiled, thumping him painfully on the back before he left the room with the others, and the pirate, who was now in agony, suddenly found himself alone with the Dark One.

The others moved back into the living room for the comfort of the fire in the hearth. The balmy warmth emanating from it seemed even more appealing now than it had before lunch, all at once, and Hook began wondering how he was going to survive the day with the angry red pustules that were spreading across his entire body and his… well, everywhere.

"You don't look so good," Gold remarked pointedly, and there was something in his voice and eyes that made the pirate want to take a swing at him.

"Maybe you should go home and lie down," the Dark One continued with a sneer on his face that would have shamed the devil he'd been reputed to be.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Captain Killian Jones returned pleasantly, trying to remember who he was nowadays (or who he would have liked to be for Emma) and drawing himself up to his full height as though he was bidding his employer a good day. Gold wasn't even looking at him anymore, though; he was already half way out the door.

"I think I'll just grab a coke from the fridge, if that's alright…?" he called after him, his shoulders slumping, and Gold waved off, not paying him any heed.

"Suit yourself," the sorcerer advised him, "and… take your time," but when Jones opened the refrigerator, he found it to be empty, as his stomach would be for the rest of the day. Irritatedly, he began scratching himself again.

* * *

_**Thank you for reading and reviewing: LynRward, cynicsquest, NobodyToo, Twyla Mercedes and Grace5231973 - I really appreciate your encouragement! Sorry I've been a bit behind in updating this, will try to do better! **_


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